Source: Dallas International District.
"At long last, development is coming: six stories/296 luxury
apartments of approximately 2600 square feet, ground floor restaurant
and retail."
— Candy's Dirt
No, we're not talking about downtown Richardson, where we're going to get the ho-hum, sticks-and-bricks, four-story apartments (Polk Street Residences) with the least amount of "retail ready" space possible that still allows the city to call it mixed-use.
We're also not talking about Richardson's future Arapaho DART Station redevelopment, where we're going to get...who knows what?
What we are talking about is Premier at Dallas Midtown, on the site where Valley View Mall used to be. Candy's Dirt has the story. Premier is the first planned construction to break ground on the massive 450 acre redevelopment site, variously called Dallas Midtown or Dallas International District. (A worrisome sign is when the three parties who own pieces of land in the district can't agree on the name of the district, but that's Dallas's problem, not Richardson's.)
Speaking of redevelopment around Richardson's Arapaho DART Station, there was this agenda item for the November 10, 2025, Richardson City Council meeting:
EXECUTIVE SESSION In compliance with Section 551.087 (1) and (2) of the Texas overnment Code, Council will convene into a closed session to discuss the following:
- Deliberation Regarding Economic Development to deliberate commercial or financial information received from a business prospect or to deliberate the offer of a financial or other incentive to a business prospect.
- Arapaho Station
Source: City of Richardson.
Executive Session means the doors are closed to the public. I don't know when the public is going to be clued in and allowed to offer opinions on this proposal. I hope it's before the city council makes an "offer of a financial or other incentive to a business prospect", as the agenda item says. I, for one, also hope that we don't use taxpayer dollars to build another Polk Street Residences apartment building.
Another thing to think about before committing public money to a development around a DART station is what the future of DART looks like. Investments around DART stations have to look riskier now than they did before four DART suburbs (Plano, Irving, Farmers Branch, and Highland Park) called elections for their citizens to decide whether or not to pull out of DART. Meanwhile, it's a bad look that Richardson isn't even giving its citizens a chance to see behind those closed doors of executive sessions how much more money Richardson may be thinking of investing in a now riskier bet on DART.
"Polk Street apartments,
minimum retail allowed —
maximum letdown."
—h/t ChatGPT
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